Entertainment

3 Mobile Platforms Your Brand Should Leverage

Sara Kowal is the vice president of product innovation at ePrize, a global leader in digital engagement that incentivizes consumer behavior across mobile, social and web for the world’s largest brands. Follow her @sekowal.

It's clear that Twitter and Facebook have been incredibly valuable to marketers. But the reality is that they are saturated by a ton of brands, and unless a marketer has a solid game plan, it can be difficult to reach the right audience.

It's time to leverage platforms and communities where your brand can be unique, be heard, and engage with smaller target markets. This is the next phase of the social web: connecting with fewer people and making a bigger impact.

And given the proliferation of smart phone and tablet adoption, mobile is the place to be. Here are three platforms to use in that space.

1. Pinwheel

Still in private beta, Pinwheel is generating pre-launch buzz due to high venture capital funding and founder Caterina Fake's track record (she co-founded Flickr). Considered a "primarily mobile experience" that’s like "mobile Flickr for places," Pinwheel uses geolocation and tagging. Users won’t just check in to a location, they'll leave contextual information like notes, annotations, memories, jokes, tips, stories, photos, and even ads for fellow users and friends.

Why Brands Should Be on Pinwheel

Eventually businesses will be able to create their own sponsored notes at given places. This opens up an opportunity for brands to create content that adds value to the platform, is inherently shareable, and also mobile.

All the benchmarks of successful social marketing are represented on this platform: brand building, community activation and social media advertising.

How to Use It

Brands can use Pinwheel notes to create brand awareness. Add a note where you have a location and perhaps offer specials through those notes. Or leave a note where you've made a difference in the community, maybe with a community service project or donation.

Generally photos get higher engagement so use photos to reflect the content of your notes and reinforce your brand.

Tagging your brand's posts will allow your content to appear, when appropriate, in common searches. Create sets for customers, employees, and job seekers or to highlight new products.

Challenges are created by Pinwheel to inspire users to add tags around a theme. Brands using these challenges authentically will humanize the brand and become part of the community.

Get your brand a larger stake in this platform by being first to the table.

Watch early adopters to see how the user base develops. Is it reflective of your target market? Is there repeat user engagement over time?

Invest time and resources accordingly as this platform develops out of beta.

2. Path

Path is a mobile-only private journal to share your life with your family and friends. Because Path has no brand pages, groups, event invitations, or game requests to clutter the interface, the focus on this new platform is sharing personal moments with loved ones.

A social circle on Path is limited to 150 people but most users have just 40 people in their network. Since its 2010 launch, Path has grown to three million members who have shared more than three billion "seen its" of Path moments.

Why Brands Should be on Path

Because Path is intended to be an intimate social network, users will trust what they see from their friends and family here much more than other social networks.

Blogs have been places on the web where people share their lives with friends and family. Over time, many blogs have shifted to a micro-blog format and we think Path has that same kind of potential to influence your brand advocate's core social circle.

Brands Doing It Right

Path as a tool for brands is still a "wait & see" scenario, with very little brand presence up to this point.An early private API could open up a way for brands to tap into this community while offering value. Nike is the first brand to partner with Path connecting your Nike+ GPS to share your runs, in real time, with family and friends.

Britney Spears is one of the only celebrities to join Path so far and it's been suggested she'll be using it as a rotating VIP fan club for 150 of her "Super Fans." It's an interesting twist to consumer engagement on the network.

The niche social network is far less likely to allow brands into their discussions, as no one wants to spam their closest friends. The onus is on brands to create experiences that consumers deem worthy of talking about and sharing with their inner circle.

Focus on sharing, not broadcasting. Think about ways your most loyal brand advocates can share what they love about your brand, what products or ideals they align themselves to. Maybe it's a sponsored local event you ask them to 'check into' on Path (and other channels), maybe it's outreach with special rewards or products your customers can't help but want to show their friends and family.

Have an idea for a value-added API to offer the community? Brands can inquire about the Private API via this contact form.

3. Tumblr

Ok, so Tumblr isn't a new social network, but it is new to attracting brands and marketing. Tumblr recently announced "promoted content" (they don't call them ads), open to "select" partners at a high premium. Reports estimate placements in the $25,000 range and because of the high price tag and questionable ROI — the ads appear only on the site's dashboard — there are other ways for marketers to tap into this audience.

Why Brands Should be on Tumblr

Reach a younger, more diverse demographic: Users are, on average, younger than those on other platforms. According to Quantcast, 55% are under 34 years old, and they tend to be slightly less affluent than the web average, with roughly a quarter of them earning $30K per year in the U.S. The platform has also proven to be particularly popular among Hispanics (12%) and Asians (6%) compared to other sites measured by Quantcast.

High potential for viral sharing and amplification: Tumblr currently has 53 million blogs and generates approximately 17 billion page views a month.

Quick set up and ease of posting

Brands Doing It Right

The visual nature of the format is well suited to media and fashion brands. About 20% of approximately 40 million daily posts on Tumblr blogs are related to fashion. The platform is very mobile friendly, both for viewing and adding content, can incorporate an Instagram feed seamlessly, and simple tagging and re-blogging within the large community makes the viral potential tremendous.

A media company getting it right is NPR. Their Tumblr gives the visual back stories behind the radio shows and podcasts.

How to Get Started

Use visual images!

Use your Tumblr as a digital focus group.

Watch what content is most liked and re-blogged to determine what resonates in the digital culture.

Use this information to guide the kinds of marketing content your brand creates, not just for Tumblr but for all digital marketing.

While not every platform is right for every brand, it's important to keep your marketing strategy agile enough to try new, and smaller things that could potentially have major impact. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, and as consumers’ Facebook news feeds are becoming more and more saturated, your brand can’t risk being drowned out. Exploring other areas where you can engage consumers early on in authentic and strategic ways while raising awareness of your brand across multiple platforms.

If you have other social media platforms you've got your eye on, let us know in the comments.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.